Linkage Development and the Overall Improvement of Asian Cities' Sustainable Competitiveness Level: Based on the Perspective of Spatial Externalities

With the slow recovery of the global economic crisis and the rapid rise of the Asian economy, the fierce urban competitiveness will not only be manifested as competition for economic competitiveness, but also as a competition for sustainable competitiveness of cities. This paper uses the GNS method of spatial econometrics to study the sustainable competitiveness of 655 sample cities in Asia, and makes up for the shortcomings of existing researches in quantitative analysis. The study found that the maximum contribution to the target city's sustainable competitiveness is 0.694, its spatial spillover effect of has a maximum elastic value of 0.067 for urban sustainable competitiveness, and the effective distance threshold is 800 km within which, its important influence cannot be ignored. At the same time, the improvement of infrastructure, social inclusion and institutional management have a strong effect on the promotion of sustainable competitiveness in Asia, followed by economic vitality, environmental quality and human capital potential, and finally by technological innovation and global linkages. The conclusions of this paper have some important policy implications for optimizing the level of sustainable competitiveness of cities and improving the region's overall sustainable competitiveness level.